THE    ROOTS    OF    A 

WORLD 
COMMONWEALTH 


V 


^^'^ 


BY 


oc 

p.  T.  FORSYTH,  M.A.,  D.D.  V<v„, 

^    Author  of  "Theology  in  Church  and  State  " etc^Principttt 
1 1  of  Hackney    Congregational    College,  London; 

\  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Theology  in  the 

i  I  University    of    London;   Late 

\  Lecturer  at  Yale  Uni- 

versity, 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


THE    ROOTS    OF    A 

WORLD 
COMMONWEALTH 


BY 


^^^  OF  ?mice}^ 

OHT  ?   191f! 


P.  T.  FORSYTH,  M.A.,  D.D; 

Author  of  *^ Theology  in  Church  and  State  "etc.;  Principal 


of  Hackney    Congregational    College,  London; 
Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Theology  in  the 
University    of    London;   Late 
Lecturer  at  Yale  Uni- 
versity, 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


THE 

ROOTS  OF  A  WORLD- 
COMMONWEALTH 

Prologue 

THERE  must  be  a  large  number  of  people  who  feel 
that  the  true  dimensions  of  the  present  war  are 
beyond  human  grasp  for  the  time.  Our  intelligence 
is  still  benumbed  both  by  its  magnitude  and  its 
methods. 

We  can  call  it  the  real  end  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
last  struggle  of  a  belated  feudalism.  We  could  say 
several  things  like  that.  But  already  we  perceive,  what 
the  great  crijes  of  the  past  reveal,  that  the  leading 
actors  themselves  cannot  measure  the  thing  they  are 
about,  and  are  borne  on  the  bosom  of  a  conflict  still 
vaster  than  that  in  which  they  feel  directly  engaged. 
Even  a  war  like  this  is  but  a  province  of  a  profounder 
strife  which  runs  through  history,  to  realise  which 
belongs  to  the  insight  of  the  master  consciences  and 
the  deep  religions  of  the  race.  Our  chief  religion  de- 
scribes that  strife  as  the  standing  world- war  for  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  its  righteousness;  and  it  regards 
it  as  the  first  charge  on  humanity.     In  modern  Ian- 


2     The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

guage  it  is  the  historic  struggle  for  the  primacy  of 
the  moral,  the  supremacy  of  conscience  in  human  af- 
fairs— first  of  God's  conscience,  then  of  man's. 

I  propose  to  regard  it  chiefly,  though  not  wholly, 
from  this  ethical  point  of  view.  I  could  say  much 
I  want  to  say  if  I  spoke  but  of  the  Kingdom  of  man. 
If  I  allude  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  I  mean  for  my 
purpose  Christian  civilisation.  I  am  not  going  so  deep 
as  the  theology  of  the  matter,  though  all  begins  and 
ends  there — in  a  theology  of  the  conscience  of  God. 

I  speak  a  universal  language  when  I  dwell  on  pub- 
lic and  historic  righteousness,  whose  primacy  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  modern  principle  of  the  supremacy  of 
conscience  for  all  life,  public  or  private,  or  what  the 
philosophers  call  the  hegemony  of  the  moral.  If  I 
speak  of  the  Cross,  I  mean,  for  my  present  purpose, 
the  principle  of  sacrifice  for  sacred  conscience  and  not 
merely  at  a  king's  command.  If  I  use  religious  terms 
it  is  because  the  last  religion  must  be  the  last  morality 
and  the  last  reality;  and  I  wish,  for  my  part,  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  a  religion  which  is  otherwise. 

If  the  centre  of  our  religion  is  not  identical  with 
the  centre  of  our  conscience,  if  the  authority  of  a 
Church  do  not  coincide  with  the  authority  for  human 
morals,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  Church.  And  for 
society  there  is  nothing  then  but  a  double  life,  warring 
and  distraught.  That  divided  soul  is  the  true  cause 
of  the  slowness  of  man's  conquest  of  nature.  That 
double  ethic  is  the  real  source  of  war  in  Christian 
lands.  Religion  comes  to  have  another  code  than  con- 
science, the  nation  has  another  standard  than  its  re- 
ligion.   And  the  end  is  neither  conscience  nor  religion, 


The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth     3 

but  a  national  egoism  fed  by  zealotry  and  controlled 
by  nothing.  Wars  arise  between  nations  because  of 
that  war  in  each  nation  and  each  man.  If  we  have  no 
moral  and  imperial  certainty  anything  may  be  true  or 
right.  Religion  then  becomes  a  sentiment,  a  comfort, 
an  insurance,  only  not  a  control.  And  therefore  the 
controls  do  not  control,  and  the  sword  does.  And  the 
base  and  bulwark  of  civilisation  is  not  the  sword  but 
the  conscience. 

So  the  real  issue  in  the  conflict  is  not  the  most 
obvious.  It  is  not  discussed  in  press  or  parliaments. 
The  most  decisive,  the  final,  forces  are  the  subtlest, 
deepest,  and  often  the  most  unwelcome.  They  are  the 
forces  of  a  historic,  and  even  cosmic,  righteousness, 
warring  with  evil  and  worth  much  blood.  The  crisis 
is  not  only  tragic  but  demonic.  There  must  be  many, 
of  various  beliefs,  for  whom  that  righteousness  runs 
through  all  great  affairs,  working  deviously  but  con- 
tinually to  the  top,  as  an  idea  and  a  power  more  deep 
and  dominant  than  all  our  conventional  notions  of  a 
providence.  One  of  the  great  moral  effects  of  war 
with  such  a  foe  as  we  now  have  is  a  new  and  awful 
revelation  of  evil;  how  awful  only  the  conscience  can 
realise  which  grasps  the  last  public  righteousness  of 
the  Universe. 


The  Gravamen 

THE  decisive  thing  in  my  own  attitude  to  the  war, 
Hke  that  of  miUions  more,  has  not  been  political 
but  moral.  It  has  not  been  the  peril  to  Britain  of  a 
keen  rival  established  on  the  Belgian  seaboard.  It 
has  been  a  matter  of  conscience  and  not  diplomacy. 
It  has  been  the  deliberate  and  thorough  repudiation 
by  Germany  of  any  moral  control  when  it  collided 
with  her  national  interests,  along  with  the  barbarism 
which  that  entails.  It  has  been  the  shameful  sacrifice 
of  moral  to  elemental  passion,  of  the  German  nation 
(which  is  a  moral  thing)  to  the  German  race  (which 
is  not). 

Germany  might  have  brought  Belgium  to  see  that 
her  suzerainty  was  the  best  thing  for  Belgian  interests. 
She  might  have  bought  Belgium  from  the  Belgians,  or 
at  least  she  might  have  bought  Belgian  independence, 
had  it  been  for  sale.  That  of  course  might  have  led 
to  war  with  France,  or  England,  or  both,  for  reasons 
purely  political  and  strategic.  But  such  a  war  would 
not  have  rallied  the  whole  of  this  country  to  its  moral 
support.  If  Germany  had  not  helped  herself  to  Bel- 
gium in  defiance  of  treaties  as  well  as  of  humanity,  if 
she  had  not  done  so  on  a  principle  which  renounced 

5 


6     The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

principle,  if  she  had  not  justified  herself  in  doing  so 
by  an  explicit  repudiation  of  public  morality  whenever 
it  stood  in  the  way  of  her  national  interests  and  armies 
— then  there  would  have  been  the  gravest  division  in 
my  own  mind,  and  in  very  many  minds  who  are  any- 
thing but  pacifist  cranks.  Nay,  the  cleavage  would 
have  run  down  the  middle  of  this  country.  It  would 
probably  have  thrown  against  war  the  bulk  of  the 
working  classes  and  the  Free  Churches. 

And,  so  far  as  my  own  convictions  go,  and  those 
of  the  people  I  most  know  or  respect,  were  this  for 
us  a  war  of  exploitation  and  aggrandisement,  we 
should  not  only  have  nothing  to  do  with  it,  but  we 
should  protest  and  oppose  it  with  all  our  might.  It 
is  this  grasping,  amoral,  and  unhallowed  civilisation, 
wherever  found,  that  has  brought  the  world  to  such  a 
pass.  It  is  a  passion  which  is  the  death  of  human  so- 
ciety. If  ever  there  was  a  cause  that  justified  national 
resistance  unto  the  death  for  the  world's  sake  it  is  the 
active  protest  against  the  creed  (so  fatal  to  civilisa- 
tion) that  a  nation  makes  the  conscience  instead  of  the 
conscience  the  nation.  The  latter  is  our  British  belief, 
ever  since  the  British  genius  spoke  its  great  and  saving 
word  in  Puritanism.  Had  the  great  German  people 
ever  risen  to  that  moral  height,  even  to  the  length  of 
solemn  regicide,  had  it  risen  to  the  conscience  that 
founded  America,  there  would  have  been  one  free 
nation  the  more  in  the  world,  and  one  that  (with  her 
splendid  gifts  now  debased)  could  have  been  to  the 
world  of  nations  a  blessing  as  great  as  she  is  now  their 
bane. 


II 

"Heal  Thyself" 

I  know  that  our  British  history^  when  we  were 
dealing  with  other  lands  or  races,  has  to  its  account 
(with  all  our  glories)  phases  and  stages  of  which  we 
have  reason  to  be  much  ashamed.  We  are  none  of  us 
happy  about  the  way  we  got  India,  and  none  of  us 
proud  of  the  way  we  lost  America.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  we  are  more  or  less  abashed.  And  we  have 
striven  to  heal  ourselves.  We  cast  back  to  Britain's 
old  Puritan  strain,  which  once  saved  the  nation  from 
destruction  but  could  not  save  it  from  relapse.  Puri- 
tan theology  may  be  out  of  date,  but  the  Puritan 
majesty  of  righteousness  cannot  die.  It  remained  the 
last  of  the  heroisms  up  till  now,  when  it  has  received 
a  worthy  peer  in  our  present  war,  and  a  worthy  con- 
sort in  the  American  people.  We  have  not  lost  our 
sense  of  the  righteousness  that  makes  us  ashamed. 

We  repudiate  the  England  of  the  Restoration  and 
of  the  "bloods,"  as  we  do  the  Germany  of  the  Junkers. 
We  have  carried  our  change  even  to  repentance  and 
amendment.  Even  at  the  worst  we  were  not  out  for 
militarist  world-empire.  And  at  the  best  we  have  been 
recognised  as  trustees  of  justice  over  the  world,  and 
apostles  of  constitutional  liberty.    If  you  say  we  were 

7 


8     The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

not  worthy  to  be  agents  of  a  divine  purpose,  I  reply 
that  is  not  at  our  choice,  but  at  His  Who  made  of  de- 
serters apostles.  And  we  have  repented  in  a  way  far 
more  to  the  purpose  than  days  of  humiliation  in 
Churches.  For  a  century  we  have  produced  the  fruits 
of  repentance.  Having  saved  Europe  from  Napoleon 
as  we  saved  it  long  ago  from  Spain,  we  have  gone  on 
to  foster  the  small  nations.  We  are  trying  to  do  be- 
lated justice  to  Ireland,  hindered  chiefly  by  the  temper 
which  produced  the  wars  of  religion  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  We  have  changed  our  treatment  of  peasantry 
and  poverty  everywhere.  We  have  totally  changed 
our  attitude  to  India,  which  we  hold  for  the  Indians 
when  they  are  ripe.  We  have  given  our  franchise  and 
opened  our  Constitution  to  our  foes  the  Boers  of 
South  Africa  and  made  them  valuable  friends.  We 
can  win  the  peoples  we  conquer,  and  neither  carries 
malice.  We  are  not  yet  forsaken  by  the  spirit  of 
reconciliation. 


Ill 

The  World-Righteousness 

This  is  very  much  more  than  a  just  war.  It  is  not 
the  clash  of  two  huge  egotisms,  one  of  them  with  a 
rather  better  case  than  the  other.  That  would  not 
have  rallied  the  nation  or  the  nations.  It  would  never 
have  brought  in  America.  Justice  is  a  great  word, 
but  it  is  here  too  poor.  It  mostly  means  distributive 
justice,  or  fair  play,  what  Burke  calls  commutative 
justice,  which  does  not  duly  fit  the  vast,  the  universal, 
issue.  We  need  a  word  more  sovereign,  one  with 
more  spiritual  and  imaginative  tone  thrilling  in  its 
moral  chord.  We  need  a  term  to  describe  constitutive 
justice.  We  need  the  greatest  word  in  our  moral  lan- 
guage. We  should  rise  to  the  word  on  which  history 
and  Bible  crystallise — the  word  righteousness.  "In 
the  course  of  justice  none  of  us  should  see  salvation," 
but  the  course  of  righteousness  means  a  moral  re- 
demption for  all  nations. 

This  is  a  war  crucial  for  the  New  Humanity,  for 
the  world-righteousness  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  It 
is  a  conflict  of  the  kind  which  made  Christianity  at  its 
heart  a  struggle  for  the  world-righteousness  in  all  na- 
tions. We  stand  in  an  agony  against  a  passion  of 
world-empire  which   frankly  discards  that  idea.     A 

9 


10    The  Roots  of  a  World-Commonwealth 

war  merely  just  does  not  directly  challenge  the  great- 
est of  all  moral  realities,  the  Kingdom  of  God;  but 
this  does.  A  world-war  does  which  is  provoked  by  a 
nation  that  is  frankly  amoral  amid  its  profuse  appeals 
to  God,  and  that  challenges  in  the  name  of  a  racial 
civilisation  the  Kingship  for  which  the  Founder  of  its 
own  religion  stood  and  fell.  That  is  at  stake  for 
which  Christ  died — the  world-righteousness  among  the 
peoples  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Such  a  war  is  a 
function  of  the  world's  Redemption  for  all  who  have 
not  sectarianised  or  sentimentalised  that  word.  It  is 
part  of  that  historic  translation  of  the  world's  deliv- 
erance by  righteousness  into  the  Kingdom  of  God 
which  is  the  first  charge  upon  the  conscience  of  the 
Christian  nations. 

As  to  the  Christian  place  of  war  I  will  only  say 
this.  If  a  nation  has  ceased  to  be  a  sandheap  of 
warring  atoms  and  has  risen  to  one  corporate  life, 
then  it  has  at  least  a  quasi-personality.  In  that  degree 
it  must  have  a  conscience  continuous  through  the  fleet- 
ing generations.  And  if  it  be  said  that  it  cannot  have 
a  Christian  conscience,  it  may  be  owned  that  the  na- 
tional stage  of  ethic  lags  behind  that  of  the  best  indi- 
viduals or  the  highest  ideals.  But  it  does  not  there- 
fore cease  to  be  Christian,  any  more  than  Christ's 
treatment  of  lunacy  ceases  to  be  Christian  because  it 
took  the  imperative  way  of  coercing  demons  in  the 
name  and  service  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

Peace  at  any  price  is  less  than  pagan ;  righteousness 
at  any  price,  at  the  price  of  the  blood  of  the  sons  of 
God,  is  the  Christian  principle.  This  is  a  war  which 
rallies   the   conscience   of   the  world,   and   ranges   it 


The  Roots  of  a  World-Commonwealth    11 

against  the  aggressor.  And  the  conscience  of  the 
world  reflects  the  conscience  of  God  which  makes  the 
moral  order  of  His  universe.  Of  such  dimensions  is 
this  war  to  a  moral  imagination  adequate  to  the 
situation. 

There  have  been  wars  for  religion,  for  trade,  for 
the  forcing  of  what  was  thought  to  be  a  higher  civili- 
sation; and  there  have  been  wars  of  principle  where, 
as  against  Napoleon,  we  stood  for  the  sanctity  of  law 
against  force  that  has  none.  Of  the  last  kind  is  this 
war,  only  on  a  vaster  scale,  and  without  the  mitiga- 
tions of  chivalry.  It  is  as  much  more  sordid  than 
Napoleon's  wars  as  Goethe's  Mephistopheles  is  a  mean 
spirit  beside  the  Miltonic  Satan.  Milton  alone  could 
describe  Germany's  fall  from  heaven.  It  is  a  war  on 
our  part  for  the  freedom  of  constitutional  nations, 
federated  against  an  empire  which  would  erase,  by 
military  Ultramontanism,  all  nationality  in  its  univer- 
sal grasp  of  sea  and  land.  The  Emperor,  the  Head  of 
the  German  Church,  wages  a  war  which  he  admits  to 
have  no  relation  to  righteousness,  but  only  to  neces- 
sity. That  is  the  bully's  plea.  And  it  seems  to  me 
Satanic. 

What  is  attacked  is  neither  Belgium,  Britain,  nor 
France.  It  is  the  foundations  of  civilisation.  It  is 
that  moral  element  which  prevents  all  civilisation  from 
falling  back  into  barbarism.  It  is  the  righteousness 
which  alone  can  cope  with  the  elaborate  egoism  on 
which  mere  civilisation  stands,  and  which  alone  can 
arrest  the  sentence  of  death  which  a  mere  civilisation 
carries  in  itself.  What  we  see  is  the  moral  collapse 
of  a  civilisation  based  on  money  and  all  it  can  buy  as 


12    The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

the  power  of  the  Universe,  a  temper  which  has  even 
infected  the  very  Church  as  a  benevolent  concern  ex- 
traordinarily expensive.  A  culture  whether  of  the 
arts,  the  sciences,  the  industries,  or  the  charities,  taken 
alone,  and  without  this  moral  yeast,  sinks  in  the  end 
to  cruelty  and  lying,  as  the  splendid  Renaissance  ended 
in  Alexander  VI.  and  Macchiavelli. , 

This  righteousness  alone  establishes  and  exalts  a 
nation.  For  the  nation's  securityXisUts  moral  Chris- 
tianity. And  a  nation  is  Christian  not  when  a  Church 
is  established  by  law,  but  when  righteousness  is  estab- 
lished by  conscience  within  its  borders.  It  is  the  pub- 
lic conscience  that  makes  a  nation  Christian  and  as- 
sures its  place.  Neither  a  soul  nor  a  people  is  saved  in 
perpetuity  even  by  the  practice  of  individual  virtue, 
but  by  the  faith,  honour,  and  service  of  a  historic 
righteousness  in  its  councils.  That  is  what  makes  a 
nation  great  and  keeps  it  so.  The  greater  a  nation  is 
the  more  it  is  a  loyal  citizen  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 
In  this  light  let  us  not  fear  what  we  may  be  unhappy 
enough  to  suffer,  but  rather  what  we  might  be  weak 
enough  to  do.  Let  us  despise  danger  in  the  pursuit 
of  honour  and  duty.  The  worship  of  these  things 
marks  the  democratic  aristocracy. 


IV 

Brotherhood 

There  is  no  Idea  that  is  more  in  the  air  outside  the 
Central  Empires  than  the  idea  of  equal  fellowship  or 
brotherhood.  In  our  armies  it  may  be  said  to  be  the 
ruling  idea,  and  it  will  mean  very  much  when  they 
return.  It  is  part  of  the  humane  movement  which  for 
a  century  has  been  spreading  over  those  parts  of 
Christendom  which  remain  sensitive  to  spiritual  ideas 
wider  than  national  range,  or  to  moral  sense  which 
rises  above  racial  egoism.  It  goes  round  the  world 
with  the  sun,  linking  Russia  with  America,  and  it 
seems  to  miss  only  the  Turk  and  the  Teuton.  It  se- 
lects its  devotees  from  the  highest  class  and  from  the 
lowest,  passing  by  only  the  bully  and  the  profiteer.  It 
is  the  aspect  of  Christianity  which  most  commends 
itself  to  the  general  heart  and  the  popular  mind.  And 
that  is  all  to  the  good. 

But  it  has,  or  is  apt  to  have,  one  defect.  It  is  apt 
to  be  felt  as  a  sympathetic  idea  rather  than  a  moral. 
And  that  is  lovely,  but  it  does  not  wear. 

It  is  more  readily  felt  as  an  enthusiasm  than  as  a 
principle  or  a  righteousness,  as  a  sentiment  than  as  an 
obligation,  as  *'Thou  mayst  love"  rather  than  *'Thou 
shalt  love."     Alliance  without  obligation  almost  in- 

13 


14    The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

vites  discord.  Clans  cannot  co-operate  (else  Culloden 
would  have  been  different)  ;  great  nations  can  and 
must. 

Brotherhood  comes  home  to  the  crowded  and  glori- 
ous hour  rather  than  to  the  silent  seasons  where  the 
great  powers  master  life.  It  may  belong  to  the  after- 
dinner  eloquence  rather  than  to  the  courage  of  three 
in  the  morning.  It  feels  that  man  is  one  by  his  heart 
more  than  by  his  conscience,  and  great  by  his  emo- 
tions rather  than  by  his  moral  loyalties.  ''One  touch 
of  nature  makes  the  whole  world  kin"  we  say.  And  so 
it  does  for  an  occasion.  Does  it  in  perpetuity?  Is 
that  the  ground  of  our  standing  conviction  and  prac- 
tice of  human  unity?  Fellow-feeling  is  powerful  to 
thrill  us ;  is  it  all  we  need  to  establish  and  settle  us  as 
a  human  race,  or  even  as  a  people?  Can  national  unity 
rest  only  on  racial  enthusiasm?  Is  it  more  secure 
with  the  poets  than  with  the  puritans  ?  Is  racial  preju- 
dice and  affinity  a  world  bond?  Is  it  not  turned,  in 
such  a  war  as  this,  to  be  the  despotism  of  one  race  at 
the  cost  of  all  nationality  besides,  and  all  freedom 
everywhere?  The  German  brotherhood  is  as  strong 
as  ours,  but  Prussianism  puts  a  moral  blight  on  it. 

What  is  to  make  fellowship  perpetual  and  fraternity 
universal?  What  is  to  lift  us  above  gusts  of  enthusi- 
asm, and  secure  us  in  a  standing  reality  of  union? 
What  is  to  moralise  fraternity?  What  is  to  place 
brotherhood  among  the  ethical  and  not  merely  the  sen- 
timental powers? 

It  is  a  greater  ideal  still.  It  is  the  passion  for  right- 
eousness. It  is  righteousness  that  endures.  It  is  the 
moral  that  is  the  royal,  and  the  holy  that  is  the  eter- 


The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth    15 

nal.  What  binds  the  men  of  the  army  into  their  com- 
radeship but  the  cause  in  which  they  fight,  suffer  and 
die  ?  They  long  unspeakably  to  return  to  the  freedoms 
and  fraternities  of  peace,  but  by  all  accounts  they  are 
still  more  firmly  and  grimly  bent  on  seeing  this  thing 
through  and  making  an  end  of  the  evil  in  it.  They 
are  most  one  in  their  passion  that  the  world-righteous- 
ness for  which  they  came  out  shall  be  secured,  that 
freedom  shall  be  delivered  from  force,  and  democracy 
given  room  to  live. 

This  is  only  one  forcible  illustration  of  the  principle 
that  fellowship  has  its  real  ground  and  last  guarantee 
in  righteousness,  that  brotherhood  rests  on  father- 
hood, that  the  trusty  foundation  of  comradeship  is  not 
a  mutual  feeling  but  a  common  lo>alty,  that  a  nation 
has  no  final  stay  which  discards  conscience,  disowns 
ethic,  perverts  righteousness  to  the  right  of  the 
stronger,  and  falls  back  for  its  weapons  on  the  crudest 
or  cunningest  forms  of  the  struggle  for  existence.  It 
is  but  another  instance  of  the  principle  that  a  sound 
society  of  man  rests  on  the  righteous  Kingdom  of 
God,  and  that  the  nations  that  forget  it  shall  be  turned 
into  hell — as  in  hell  by  its  neglect  we  now  are. 

Fellowship  is  a  fine  and  engaging  idea,  but  the 
moral  idea  of  righteousness  with  a  universal  royalty 
is  a  power  greater  and  more  splendid  still.  The  wave 
of  brotherhood  is  really  carried  on  the  tide  of  right- 
eousness, and  comrade  loyalty  rests  on  loyalty  to  the 
King  of  nations  Whose  throne  is  the  conscience  of  a 
world.  Great  and  dear  are  the  hours  when  hearts 
flow  together  and  are  enlarged;  but  still  greater  and 
more  during  are  those  times  when  we  combine  to 


16    The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

realise  the  majesty  of  conscience,  and  the  royalty  of 
a  right  we  do  not  make  but  obey. 

This  is  the  passion  that  honours  a  nation,  and  guar- 
antees respect  for  all  nations  besides,  which  honours 
nationality  as  a  sacred  principle,  and  secures  it  in 
public  responsibility.  The  fraternal  passion  of  the 
hour  can  only  be  secured  in  the  loftier  passion  of  a 
righteousness  which  outlives  all  Time,  and  which  sub- 
dues all  space  to  something  more  than  civilisation. 
And  it  is  for  this  righteousness  that  our  armies  unite. 
This  is  the  deep  and  real  Entente. 


V 
Sacrifice 

Besides  fraternity,  and  in  connection  with  it,  there 
is  another  idea  which  has  laid  hold  of  the  finest  spirits 
in  most  lands — the  idea  of  sacrifice.  There  are  those 
who  say  and  feel  that  without  the  spirit  and  practice 
of  sacrifice  no  nation  can  exist.  Of  these  some  would 
even  go  to  the  extreme  of  saying  that  it  is  that  on 
which  the  nation  rests.  The  nation's  health,  they  say, 
stands  at  last  on  the  surrender  of  the  egotism  of  the 
natural  man,  and  not  on  the  facilities  it  provides  for  it. 
Sacrifice  like  comradeship  has  become  a  passion,  and 
a  passion  which  has  seized  with  great  and  noble  power 
our  youth — youth  which  we  used  to  think  egoist 
enough.  There  are  some  who  have  believed  in  sacri- 
fice when  they  believed  in  little  else.  And  indeed  it 
wields  a  spell  which  only  a  lost  soul  can  refuse  to  feel. 

But  here  again  we  are  called  upon  to  reflect  and 
question.  And  that  not  because  we  are  victims  of  the 
critical  temper,  but,  for  one  thing,  because  we  are  faced 
by  the  fact  that  the  side  we  call  right  cannot  claim  a 
monopoly  of  such  a  virtue.  There  is  as  much  sacri- 
fice among  our  enemies  as  among  ourselves,  as  there 
may  be  as  much  bravery.  Indeed  there  is  possibly 
more  individual  sacrifice  in  Germany  for  the  father- 

17 


18    The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

land  than  in  England.  The  temper  of  a  certain  obe- 
dience is  more  strong  there  than  anywhere  on  our 
side.  It  amounts  to  a  dociHty  which  is  even  fatal,  fatal 
to  national  dignity,  self-respect,  or  freedom,  fatal  even 
to  the  care  to  be  free.  So  that  we  are  driven  to  ask 
if  such  sacrifice  or  obedience  per  se  is  really  a  moral 
power.  Can  it  carry  a  world's  civilisation?  It  is  im- 
pressive, but  does  it  renew  its  own  strength  ?  It  has  a 
great  aesthetic  value,  and  it  calls  out  a  chorus  of 
poetry;  but  is  it  ethical,  does  it  make  necessarily  for 
the  last  and  greatest  ends  of  society?  Has  it  the  stay- 
ing power  of  moral  kingship  and  its  righteousness? 

The  truth  is  that  neither  sacrifice,  martyrdom,  nor 
obedience  has  in  itself  moral  value.  These  features 
may  rise  to  a  kind  of  sanctity  round  a  very  defective 
moral  core.  You  can  be  as  devoted  in  sacrifice  to  an 
evil  power  as  to  a  good.  You  can  be  as  thorough  in 
obedience  to  a  usurping  as  to  a  lawful  lord.  Sacrifice 
is  morally  neuter.  Its  power  is  not  in  itself.  There- 
fore it  cannot  be  the  foundation  of  a  nation,  nor  the 
security  of  humanity.  It  cannot  be  a  staying  power. 
Everything  depends  on  its  moral  interior.  Everything 
turns  on  who  sacrifices,  and  for  what  end.  What  is 
obeyed?  Who  is  served?  For  what  are  we  martyrs? 
To  lay  down  life  is  not  necessarily  a  moral  action.  A 
man  can  sacrifice  his  life  for  an  illicit  passion  which  but 
scatters  tragedy  all  around.  Everything  turns  on  the 
cause  or  the  person  that  commands  the  sacrifice.  Is  it 
for  righteousness?  It  is  not  the  amount  of  devotion 
that  matters,  but  the  quality,  the  dignity  of  it.  And 
its  dignity  is  a  moral  feature.  The  sacrifice  of  the 
German  soldier  becomes  such  a  brutal  thing  because  it 


The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth    19 

is  offered  to  an  amoral  power  without  a  soul,  because 
the  country,  with  all  its  virtues,  has  sold  itself  to  mere 
militarism  and  has  become  the  tool  of  a  materialistic 
idealism.  It  has  been  made  to  believe  in  a  civilisation 
that  rests  on  that  kind  of  power.  It  is  sacrifice  to  a 
God  without  a  conscience.  And  such  a  devotee  is  a 
minister  of  unrighteousness,  Lucifer's  viceroy,  and  an 
official  in  the  synagogue  of  Satan. 

The  sacrifice  that  tells  in  the  end  is  the  sacrifice 
that  holds  most  of  righteousness  as  the  ground  of  his- 
tory and  society,  and  means  most  for  it.  What  moral- 
ises all  sacrifice  and  all  society  from  the  centre  of  our 
religion  is  not  merely  a  classic  case  of  sacrifice,  but 
something  that  establishes  the  final  righteousness  of 
the  world,  and  recovers  the  moral  soul  of  universal 
things.  My  point  is  that  no  amount  of  the  humane 
virtues,  no  fraternities  or  valours,  will  save  a  nation 
or  justify  a  cause  if  it  defy  the  conscience  of  the  race, 
as  Germany  with  all  her  great  qualities  has  done. 


VI 

Social  Liberty 

The  war  is  a  war  for  the  world's  liberty.  It  in- 
terests many  of  us  most  because  it  is  not  a  war  for 
Britain's  place,  except  in  so  far  as  Britain  is  a  trustee 
for  that  universal  freedom.  Liberty  is  another  word 
which  must  acquire  a  moral  content  if  it  is  to  justify 
the  convulsion  of  mankind.  It  is  righteousness  that 
gives  the  law  to  patriotism  and  consecrates  liberty. 
We  war  with  a  people  that  claims  the  freedom  to 
override  mankind's  liberty  at  will,  with  a  power  which 
has  been  ostentatious  in  its  hatred  of  it,  and  which 
is  up  against  the  free  conscience  of  the  world.  To 
give  way  to  that  power  is  to  banish,  with  conscience, 
also  liberty  from  history,  and  to  reduce  it  to  a  Pri- 
vatsache,  a  private  fad.  It  is  true  that  crimes  have 
been  done  in  the  name  of  liberty;  but  they  were  caused 
by  a  liberty  as  lawless  as  is  Prussian  tyranny,  as  much 
of  a  law  to  itself,  and  one  that  cared  more  for  place 
than  for  right,  more  for  rights  than  for  duties.  There 
is  a  power  which  surmounts  mere  nationalism,  mere 
patriotism,  mere  empire.  It  is  the  power  of  the  world- 
righteousness,  which  I  keep  saying  is  the  real  issue 
in  this  war.  To  push  empire,  trade,  or  ambition  at 
the  cost  of  that,  or  to  its  neglect,  is  to  serve  the  empire 

20 


The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth    21 

of  man's  enemy,  to  say  nothing  of  God's.  It  is  cer- 
tainly not  worth  human  Hfe  and  suffering  on  a  world 
scale;  for  the  whole  world  is  not  worth  the  moral 
soul.  To  lead  minor  nations  into  war  for  the  greater 
nation's  aggrandisement  is  to  go  into  the  service  and 
pay  of  Satan;  who  always  exacts  the  letter  of  his 
bond,  and  takes  the  uttermost  farthing  before  he  is 
done.  It  is  the  free  conscience  that  makes  the  free 
man.  And  the  free  conscience  is  one  that  is  at  home 
in  the  humane  righteousness  that  Germany  discards 
for  herself  and  fights  in  the  world. 


VII 

Democracy 

The  issue  in  the  great  conflict  has  been  well  de- 
scribed, by  a  late  comer  who  has  said  some  of  the 
finest  things  about  it,  as  the  effort  to  make  and  keep 
the  world  a  safe  place  for  democracy.  It  is  a  war  for 
democracy  against  dominion.  It  is  our  last  conflict 
with  expiring  feudalism,  with  its  robber  barons  and 
its  helot  crowds.  But  what  is  the  secret  spell  in  either 
democracy  or  freedom?  Do  they  mean  the  absence 
of  all  dominion,  all  control?  Is  righteousness  and  its 
sovereignty,  just  outside  democracy,  in  a  neutrality 
more  or  less  benevolent?  Is  the  whole  range  of  the 
moral  order  of  a  historic  world  just  parallel  with 
democracy,  as  a  co-ordinate  power  at  an  ocean's  dis- 
tance? Or  is  this  order  a  living  factor,  and  at  last 
the  dominant  factor,  in  this  as  in  every  form  of  human 
society  ?  Is  democracy  but  self-government  ?  But  that 
might  be  a  colossal  egoism  were  it  all.  It  might  be- 
come Germanic.  Is  liberty  but  the  right  and  room  of 
every  man  or  nation  to  be  themselves,  and  develop, 
like  German  behaviour,  according  to  the  law  of  their 
own  uncouth  being?  Is  that  really  more  than  the  very 
egoism  of  self-realisation  which  is  doing  all  the  mis- 
chief?    It  could  be  as  cruel  as  the  free  love  which 

22 


The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth    23 

leads  the  wretched  aesthete  to  discard  his  seduced  vic- 
tim when  he  is  tired  of  her.  The  bond  (if  you  please) 
has  become  unreal,  and  interferes  with  the  free  de- 
velopment of  his  personality. 

Would  the  mere  passion  for  democratic  independ- 
ence end  war  between  democracies?  Is  all  won  for 
liberty  when  democracy  wars  down  its  political  foe? 
What  is  to  unite  democracies?  What  is  to  protect 
liberty  or  democracy  against  itself?  What  is  to 
save  democracy  in  its  own  soul  as  well  as  to  secure  it 
in  its  own  place  ?  What  is  to  save  it  from  its  internal 
foe  and  make  it  find  its  own  soul?  What  is  to  de- 
liver it  from  the  Bourse  lust  which  infatuates  Ger- 
many? What  is  to  rescue  it  from  its  isolation  from 
human  society,  or  protect  it  from  political  sectarianism, 
and  a  mere  nonconforming  conscience  of  ^'Thou  shalt 
not"  ?  What  is  to  guard  it  from  the  moral  anarchy  of 
individualism,  and  make  it  a  real  factor  of  humane 
civilisation?  What  but  the  reign  of  the  universal  law, 
a  national  obedience  to  it,  and  a  federation  of  peoples 
free  in  it?  What  but  our  great  object  of  this  war,  so 
terrible  in  its  righteousness? 

The  supremacy  of  conscience  is  the  strength  at  once 
of  the  soul,  of  the  nation,  of  humanity;  and  conscience 
is  less  an  obedience  to  particular  laws  than  that  rever- 
ence for  law  as  such  which  Germany  has  despised  and 
defied.  The  supremacy  of  conscience  is  much  more 
than  its  liberty;  and  its  supremacy  is  its  submission 
to  Right  When  free  America  joined  this  war  she 
crowned  the  liberty  that  frees  the  slave  with  the  loy- 
alty that  creates  the  servant ;  she  rose  from  the  hatred 
of  coercion  to  the  reverence  for  the  moral  authority 


24    The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

of  the  world.  And  the  rally  of  France  and  England 
was  an  act  less  of  egoism,  and  far  more  of  obedience. 
It  was  not  the  conscience  of  supremacy,  but  the  su- 
premacy of  conscience. 

Can  a  fraternity,  one  asks  again,  live  without  a 
loyalty?  Can  it  live  on  the  loyalty  of  its  members 
to  each  other,  on  the  principle  of  taking  in  each 
other's  washing?  Can  it  live  without  a  common  loy- 
alty to  a  righteousness  it  does  not  make  but  take,  which 
descends  on  it  out  of  heaven,  and  which  is  the  power 
that  rules  the  soul,  the  sun,  and  all  the  stars? 

The  first  concern  of  human  society  is  not  to  make 
its  own  laws,  but  to  follow  God's  righteousness.  The 
first  interest  of  liberty  is  that  authority.  Liberty  can 
reign  but  in  righteousness.  German  amoralism  means 
world-wide  despotism.  And  the  more  universal  the 
liberty  is  the  more  urgent  must  that  righteousness  be, 
and  the  more  enduring  its  reign.  Democracy  is  there 
for  the  sake  of  Humanity,  and  Humanity  is  there 
for  the  kingship  of  Right. 

Humanity  is  more  than  fraternity.  Democracy  is 
something  deeper  than  liberty.  It  is  responsibility. 
The  entirely  free  nations  are  the  nations  wholly  re- 
sponsible to  righteousness — not  to  liberty ;  which  might 
be  the  liberty  to  stand  aside  doubting  in  an  abject 
spirit  while  the  right  was  crucified.  Nationality  is  not 
unchristian  nor  unrighteous.  What  is  so  is  national 
amoralism.  Democratic  freedom  is  better  than  Teu- 
tonic obedience,  not  because  it  discards  obedience  and 
lives  on  the  casual,  the  swaggering,  or  the  pushing, 
but  because  it  has  a  better  obedience  for  its  root; 
beneath  it  are  the  everlasting  laws,  and  over  it  the 


The  Roots  of  a  World-Commonwealth    25 

great  white  throne.  The  one  thing  that  keeps  civilisa- 
tion from  a  return  to  barbarism  is  its  service  (to  blood 
if  need  be)  of  the  kingdom  of  a  righteousness  historic 
and  eternal. 

The  more  sound  a  democracy  is  the  more  it  must 
find  its  strength  in  all  that  makes  such  a  word  as 
righteousness  kindling,  and  the  thing  itself  supreme. 
It  is  the  great  tonic  for  war-weariness.  We  are  set 
where  we  are  in  the  battle  by  a  power  that  will  not 
let  us  go.  There  is  no  discharge  in  that  war.  How- 
ever faint  we  must  pursue.  It  is  not  our  own  ends 
we  serve.  For  we  are  finding  our  soul  in  the  lord- 
ship of  a  cause  much  greater  than  our  own,  and  in 
a  realm  for  which  we  cannot  do  better  than  die,  except 
as  we  live  to  serve  it  as  our  death  does.  The  ever- 
lasting righteousness  has  called  us  to  arms.  To  lay 
them  down  would  be  moral  mutiny,  of  which  the  end 
is  spiritual  death;  in  which  Germany,  with  all  her 
vitality,  is  as  a  nation  dead. 

And  the  same  passion  of  righteousness  that  both 
kindles  nations  and  quells  them  must  come  to  rule  also 
the  relations,  within  each  nation,  of  soul  and  soul,  and 
of  class  and  class,  ere  we  really  have  a  better  world. 
Without  this  passion  religion  is  hollow  and  patriotism 
ignoble.  What  I  call  world-righteousness  is  the  inmost 
soul  of  religion ;  and  it  makes  our  present  conflict  not 
indeed  a  war  of  religion  but  a  religious  war,  a  war  for 
the  moral  salvation  of  mankind  and  its  civilisation 
from  a  power  that  will  do  all  this  again  and  worse  if 
such  power  be  left  it.  Divide  et  impera.  It  will  take 
the  nations  one  by  one  and  devour  them  for  the  glory, 
honour  and  immortality  of  the  prince  of  this  world. 


26    The  Roots  of  a  World- Commonwealth 

Such  are  the  considerations  that  rule  not  with  one 
only  but  with  many,  many  who  hate  the  very  name  of 
war,  who  loved  the  old  Germany  with  admiration  and 
gratitude  and  who  hope  for  very  much  yet  from  her 
powerful  mind,  chastened  temper,  and  free  future,  who 
look  to  some  League  of  Nations,  and  who  are  ready 
to  turn  even  on  their  own  land  if  ever  it  yield  itself  as 
the  servant  of  public  wickedness,  and  if  it  should  rise 
up,  in  the  name  of  whatever  culture,  to  defy  the  hu- 
mane kingdom  of  the  righteous  God  of  the  nations. 


Manu/aclured  by 

GAYLORD  BROS.  Inc. 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

Stockton,  Calif. 


Date  Due 

! 

/--:                                                           1 

1 

<;> 

1 

1 

, 

r      r         1 

i 

1 

i 

1 

h"'    1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

1 

f) 

D525.F73 
Cheroots  of  a  world 


Princeton  Theologi 


commonwealth 


1    1012  00021   7580 


